Mobile Suit Gundam: Scum of the Trenches
by Synthesis
Summary: The take of two Federation Sharpshooters sent to Jaburo, shortly before the events of 'O8 MS TEAM'. Rated 'R' for profanity and violence later on.


_Mobile Suit Gundam: Scum of the Trenches_

**Act 1**

"God damn it, Fourth Team! Aren't you ready to move out yet? You guys are _way _behind schedule!"

Leaving his world of pleasant dreams, Keitaro jolted awake, hitting his head on the console. _Damn cramp cockpits. You think they'd be bigger than in a GM, but no, they're not. _He grabbed his headset and yelled into it.

"We'll be ready as soon as those geeks in engineering load up our equipment! _It's not my fault!_" 

"Yeah right, whatever," the other voice mumbled. It was the launch coordination officer, Berken. He stood on a hydraulic platform that overlooked the hangar, next to his assistant, with its massive doors open. Inside, a huge mobile suit, the Federation _RX-79 Ground Type _Gundam, knelt directly in front of the blast doors, with two other mobile suits positioned near it. "Just move your ass as soon as you can!"

_Glad I don't have his job_, Keitaro mused, now wide-awake. _Sure, he may get more sleep, but all that talking ruins his attitude nonetheless. _He felt around for the manual lock switches, and flipped them down. There was a loud metallic grinding noise, as the locks on the mobile suit's equipment rack slid open. 

Outside, more voices spoke. "Okay, it's in position, lock 'er down!" 

The entire MS shuddered as the service crane dropped the cargo container, and locked into place. Keitaro toyed around with the ignition sequence, warming it up through the process of repeatedly flipping switches on and off, in hopes he might not overload the circuit breakers at the same time. He opened up the channel again.

"You took your damn time!" Keitaro hissed over the channel. 

"Lay off, Cohen," a voice replied. "I'd hate to see you die from something as stupid as a faulty nuclear reactor overload, if you know what I mean."

Keitaro smirked and pressed a key on the console to reply. "Somehow I think that would suit you just fine, Kirishima. Then you'd get both a good laugh and a new command to yourself." 

"And become a hard-ass Lieutenant Commander like you? I think I'll pass!" In the Gundam to his right was Kanna Kirishima, his second-in-command. 

"Whatever. You guys ready to launch?"

"Affirmative, sir, just waiting for you," one voice, one of a masculine sounding woman, remarked snidely. 

"Hurry it up, will ya'?" another more annoying voice countered. "At this rate, the Zekes will die of old age first!"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

"Fourth Team, you've got clearance to deploy, _so hurry up and fucking deploy_!"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

Like the disgruntled soldiers who piloted them, the three blue-and-white Gundams lifted up and slowly walked down the path. 

"Take her out nice and easy," Keitaro instructed over the channel. "Try not to step on anything. Remember, this isn't a GM."

"No shit, Sherlock," mumbled the female voice. 

"Come on, let's go for it!" the pilot of the Gundam to his left, the annoying voice of the ever-vexing Bernard Monsha, the Fourth Team's temp-pilot, preached in a low falsetto of a voice. "Don't let those fags in the Seventh Team take all the glory!" 

Keitaro rolled his eyes and turned to his right monitor in his cockpit, where he saw someone on the ground waving at him. He shrugged and opened the hatch up, and perched himself out.

"Hey, Keitaro!" one of the ground operators screamed, as he waved. "Make sure to come back alive!"

The other grinned and waved back. "I will if you've got that money you owe me!"

"In that case, I hope the vultures get you!"

At the feet of the Gundams, two Type 71 Hovertrucks scurried around quickly. Keitaro looked down to recognize the one with a gray stripe and a small '04' marking on the underside, as the one assigned to the Fourth Team.

"Come on, get out of the way, assholes!" Monsha screamed again.

Keitaro smacked the com switch. "Unit Two, cut the chatter!"

"All right, all right." 

The cockpit hatch closed again, and Keitaro buckled and tightened the restraint harnesses. "Gentlemen, let's earn our pay," he announced over the channel.

There was a loud, deep cough over the channel from Kirishima's Gundam.

"_Comrades_, let's earn our rank," he muttered.

The Three Gundams marched out, shields in one hand and 100mm or Beam Rifles in the other. In his cockpit, Cohen rubbed his eyes and pressed a key to open the channel to Command. "Command, this is the Fourth Team, moving out."

"_Finally. _How's it feel, Keitaro?"

"Smooth. Real smooth," he admitted. "Though I still miss my GM."

"Maybe this mission will chance you mind, Lieutenant Commander Cohen."

Keitaro laughed. "Yeah, who knows, maybe it will."

**II**

The decision had been made nearly a month ago, by the greater powers. Or in reality, by the subordinates standing in the shadows of the greater powers.

"Commander Kojima," the voice announced. "Major Brendan, requesting permission to enter."

An older man, with a considerable resemblance to the famous comedian Gaucho Marx, complete with the humorous mustachio and comical spectacles, looked up from the desk in his 'office', a structural tent in the middle of the clearing, literally in the shadow of the mountain that housed the Headquarters of the Earth Federation's Armed Forces, at least until noon.

Jaburo. The supposedly final bastion of the Military Government. The nerve center of South America.

Kojima looked up from his desk. "Oh, it's you, Major Brendan. It's good to know I can depend on you to be punctual. Come on, get in, you know I called you."

Major Juan Brendan, a neatly dressed man of normal stature and a local of the area, walked up to him, a briefcase in his hands. "Thank you, sir."

Kojima seemingly cut to the chase. "You know why you're here, right?"

He nodded. "I have a good idea, sir."

Kojima stared at him with those Marx-like eyes, indifferently. And he decided to beat around the bush again. He pulled at his collar. "Sorry at the air-conditioning is on the fritz again. Damn thing's broken every other day."

Brendan took off his cap and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. "It happens, sir."

The Commander took on a sober, intellectual tone, as though the heat was settling his mind. "John, you know what my problem is?" he asked.

Brendan mentally frowned, unsure if this was a rhetorical question or not. He chose to wait, in hope that it was.

"I got a really crazy problem," he admitted. "The Spacenoids are setting up roots just a few hundred kilometers from here, maybe even closer. We never thought they'd get all the way to Jaburo after _Operation British_ missed its initial target." He looked at Brendan directly. "And the hell of it is, I can do it. Command's got Anaheim Electronics or whatever company they're using to send me a dozen or so of those new prototypes. Ground-based models. Great weapons."

Brendan sighed. Feigning false curiosity, he recited, "What's the problem then, sir?"

Kojima shifted his chair around. "You know how hard it is to find someone who can actually handle a Gundam, much less someone born on Earth? I've been forced to send whatever pilots from the colonies and resident officers into the GMs…and I can't just reassign them." Kojima reached down and retrieved a file from his desk, adorned with the Federation Insignia. "I'm down to my last reserve pilot, man by the name of South Burning."

Brendan looked down at the report, something he hadn't seen yet, or heard of in Kojima's periodic complaining. "What's the matter with him?"

"Nothing, actually. Problem is, he's a little on the older side. He declined to take the Lieutenant's Exam _twice_. Fine pilot though. My problem is that I don't want to depend on him alone, and a single pilot does not a mobile suit team make."

"I see…"

"I'm probably the only Federal Commander on the planet with three ready Gundams to spare and no pilots. What a waste." He rubbed the side of his face with a rough hand.

Brendan thought for a moment. "So, you need two pilots?"

Kojima responded with closed eyes, scratching his mustache. "Specifically, I need one officer and an assistant, but yes, I need two pilots."

"I think I might have the man your looking for. Maybe even both of them." 

Kojima opened his eyes. "Finally, some good news." Than he narrowed them. "Explain." 

The Major reached into his briefcase and produced two paper envelopes. He tore the first one open, and slid several papers out, and shuffled through them. Finally, Brendan handed the first one to the Commander. 

"His name is Keitaro Cohen. Born in Kiev, UC Zero-Zero-Five-Three. Father was an esteemed Rabbi, mother unknown, probably divorced and remarried." 

"Interesting background." 

"Signed up for a two year term with us back in UC-Zero-Zero-Seven-One, to pay for tuition at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy. Turned out to be a decent air fighter pilot and an even better recon scout. Expert at not being seen. By the time the two years was up, he abandoned University and went career." 

"Kid must have liked it a lot." 

"Well, it was a tough choice between a comfortable desk job and blowing up targets in a FF-6 TIN Cod. If it was me, I would have gone with the first option. Anyway, when the War broke out and the Colony was dropped back in _British_, he led a small recon team into active sniper duty, guerilla warfare in Zeon-Occupied Germany. Once we prevented the Side from hitting it, that is." 

The Commander looked up. "Cohen's Sharpshooters?" 

The other nodded. "He made a name for himself, and eventually weaseled his way up to Lieutenant Commander. Word was he had several opportunities to give Char Aznable and a half-dozen other Zeon Hotshots free face-removals. Instead, they made it a business of hijacking and sabotaging the local Zakus. Cohen's Sharpshooters also doubled as some of our early mobile suit pilots in Europe. Anyway, when the first GMs and high-energy beam weapons became commonplace, and some of the more intrepid tactical Big-Whigs in Command proposed equipping a few newer-model Terran GMs for sniper duty, and Cohen was one of the logical choices. He wasn't the original GM Sniper, but he was the first one to devise the two-suit recon team, which most non-defensive Snipers use today." 

"Impressive. He's a competent enough pilot?" 

"Nine confirmed suit kills, and a handful of miscellaneous vehicles, all in Sniper Duty." 

"Not bad. And where is this sharpshooter now?"

"Sniping Zeon convoys outside Instanbul."

"For how long?"

"Until the Zeon learn better, I suppose."

Kojima nodded, as if to say, _Get him over here now. _"And the other pilot?" 

"Cohen's second-in-command, and fellow GM Sniper. A Japanese by the name of Kanna Kirishima." Brendan produced another dossier, one with a photograph of a darker-skinned woman with spiky red hair. "The two met in Germany, and have been working together ever since."

Kojima took the file, glancing at it. "Two-hundred and two centimeters?" he asked, looking up. "Is this a typo?"

Brendan arched his head over and looked. "No, sir, that's her height." 

Kojima's slightly comical expression seemed to state _That's a whole lot of woman_ before he turned back to inspecting the two dossiers. "I could certainly use these two. You're positive that you can get the two over here? No strings attached?"

Brendan nodded. "It might be hard to wrestle them from the commanders at Istanbul, seeing what a good record the two have, but I have something else ni mind."

**III**

Two green _RGM-79[G] _GMs slowly made their way up the crest of a hill, both of them equipped with large green cargo containers. One of them was armed with a conventional 100mm ballistic rifle, the other carried a massive beam cannon that slowed it down. 

"You've got two minutes to get position, Unit One." 

"Affirmative, two minutes is enough." Inside his cockpit, Keitaro Cohen switched off the channel, hoping that Command wouldn't buzz him again over the long-range com. _I wonder if they realize they're going to give away my position._ "Kirishima?" 

"I heard you. Waypoint's on the grassy knoll. Should give you a clear shot at the highway." Kirishima's GM turned its head around, inspecting the horizon. "You seem to be clear." 

"Good to hear. Let's move!" 

The two GMs continued their mad sprint, plowing through trees. Cohen heard a high-pitched alarm in her cockpit, and the distinctive shapes of two Zeonic aircraft passed over, and they paused momentarily. He watched them flew overhead, apparently not noticing the two GMs.

"Look like Dopps, I'd guess."  

"Should we worry about that?" Kirishima asked. 

"No point. Even if they did see us, there's nothing we could do anyway. Let's just get this over with. We've got a minute." 

The two continued marching, soon reaching the knoll. The two GMs then paused, one of them releasing the back-mounted cargo container onto the ground. The green case popped open, revealing a generator the size of a locomotive car, and a tank of coolant to match. 

In her cockpit, Kanna rested her head on her hand, bored. "I'll cover you," she said needlessly. 

"Thanks. You might as well go prone, see if you can make yourself less of a target." 

Kirishima sighed and leaned back on both control joysticks, then pushed the right one forward. Slowly, her GM got down on its torso, still aiming the 100mm forward towards the valley that the knoll overlooked. She then lay back, her hands behind her head, and sighed. "Now, we wait," she mumbled to herself. She turned to her left display and watched Keitaro assemble the beam cannon, attaching the auxiliary power cable and coolant hose to the back. 

"You want me to start up the generator and pump manually?" she asked, in a sort of snide, unconcerned attitude that suggested that she didn't want to but was offering nonetheless. 

"No, it's all right. I'll do it remotely." 

"Suit yourself," she replied, switching off the short-wave channel. She reached into the niche to the right of cockpit's seat, and pushed aside the standard-issue Federal 9mm submachine gun so she could reach the space beneath it. Kirishima arched her back over and reached even farther, feeling around the space underneath the seat. With a good yank, she pulled out a wrinkled, smudged paperback book: an illustrated novel she had received from home. As was her usual custom, Kanna reclined in her seat, opened to the last page she was on, crossed her long, muscular legs, and got ready to wait. 

Inside his own cockpit, Cohen carefully adjusted the flow of coolant and power from the generator, so that he hopefully wouldn't freeze the cannon or overload it, as to cause it to explode. Once that was out of the way, he pulled out the targeting display from behind his seat and switched it on. Directly linked to the oversized scope mounted on the weapon itself, he manually lined up the crosshairs on the center lane of a long stretch of highway. He then moved the scope, looking up the artery, to see several old-model unarmored transport trucks and two green trailers, loaded up with one Zeonic _MS-09_ Dom each. 

"Zeon flatbed," guessed Kirishima over the channel after opening it, her eyes still on the paperback. "Thirty hundred meters?" 

The moved his sights back to the original spot on the highway. "Twenty eight hundred." 

"Whatever. Just hurry up and shoot the damn things."

Keitaro wiped some crust from his right eyelid and blinked again. He carefully twisted the small knob mounted on the targeting display, increasing magnification form 38X to 42X. The orange light from the scope had a bad habit of inducing tears for many snipers, if one stared into it long enough. Viewing through the normal light spectrum, he watched as a first unarmored truck, a crude-looking thing with a tarp over the back, rolled by, followed by two more. For a second, he increased the magnification up to 50X, and briefly glimpsed at the soldiers riding in the back, one of them hanging his arm out the open back of the transport truck. He looked at the soldier, with his green uniform and awkward brown helmet, for less than a second, until the truck passed on, and he zoomed back to 42X. 

_Wait for the real target_, he told himself. A few more trucks rolled by, Keitaro didn't bother counting how many, as did two long, alluring fuel tankers, though Keitaro still held his fire. _Wait for it..._

The first trailer rolled up, the black and violet Dom rolling into Keitaro's crosshairs. He held his breath.

"What the hell's he waiting for?" asked Kirishima, rhetorically. "Shoot the damn thing!" Her lip twisted. "I'm getting hungry, and we left in such a damn rush I couldn't even bring some grub."

"_Sieg Zeon_," he muttered under his breath, suppressing a grin. 

And he pressed the trigger on his right control stick. 

Cohen felt a slight, almost rhythmical vibration as the entire GM began to shudder very lightly. A bright orange beam was emitted from the long barrel of the cannon, traveling at the speed of light to the highway, three kilometers below. Even before you could definitely see the beam, the exterior plating of the first Dom, on the right trailer, seemed to glow white and melt away, and the orange beam cleanly cut through it. As smoothly as he could, Keitaro shifted the beam's path, quickly cutting through to the other Dom, then immediately shut off the rifle. 

_Got the bastards!_

As its nuclear reactor destabilized and detonated, the first Dom immediately fumed up and exploded, blasting the trailer beneath it apart and spreading fiery debris everywhere. The second Dom on the left trailer did not explode due to reactor combustion, but instead when the ammunition stores held inside the trailer caught aflame and discharged. The entire trailer, and the Dom itself, rose up off the highway, blowing another chunk of concrete out from underneath it, and came smashing down upon one of the fuel tanks.

In hic cockpit, Keitaro immediately turned away from the targeting display, as a blinding flash appeared briefly. A fireball rose from the site on the highway, entire slabs of concrete either vaporizing or crumbling to the ground. Shrapnel caught the smaller vehicles in the front and back of where the trailers had been, crushing them into smithereens. 

Keitaro Cohen pushed the targeting display back behind his seat and stared at the primary monitor. "Well, I think that went pretty well, actually."

"Don't be so sure," counted Kanna over the channel. "Two of them are making a run for it."

"What?"  He jerked the display back in front of his face and zoomed in to 48X. "_Fuck!_"

Two small troop transports in the front of the procession were rapidly speeding off, one of them bellowing smoke. Cohen could only imagine how alarmed the soldiers inside must have been. "Well, go get them!"

Insider her cockpit, Kanna blinked and looked up from her paperback. "…_what_? What do you mean, _go get them_?"

"You've got a Hundred-Millimeter, don't you? You think I'm going to waste generator power on shooting some troop trucks?"

"_Hai, hai_…" she mumbled. Her green GM stood up to its full height, and she pulled out her own targeting display. With the normal zoom lenses of the GM, the best she could reach was 25X Magnification, but that was sufficient. She lined up the two white crosshairs, they blinked red, and she pressed the trigger.

Several 100mm rounds, leaving long streaks after them, burst out of the barrel of the ballistic gun. With slightly more delay than the beam cannon, the shells found their target, leaving several large craters in the highway. Finally, one of the flashes struck a troop truck, causing it to roll over and upwards, then come crashing down again. Another hit the second green vehicle, tearing it apart, and mutilating the humans inside. 

Kirishima inspected the wrecks with her targeting display, then pushed it away. "Their toast, poor bastards."

"Looks like it," answered Cohen over the channel. He rested his head on his hand, leaning to the side of his cockpit. He casually reached forward and flipped on the active radar, when he was greeted by a loud alarm inside his cockpit. "Oh crap, not again…"

"Two _Zeke_ aircraft," Kanna explained, raising her aim above the horizon. "Maybe the same ones we ran into earlier. You want me to wax them?"

"Yeah, the beam cannon's still cooling," responded Keitaro, poking his finger at the gauges on his control surface. 

"Well, I guess that's what I'm here for, right?" She turned herself around and waited for one of the Zekes to be stupid enough to get within her firing range, and when the first ugly green patrol craft did, she lined it up and fired at it, ripping it apart. A few seconds later, and another vehicle joined its comrade. 

Cohen toyed with his scanner, then pushed forward on the control sticks slightly, his GM standing up. "That looks like it. Let's head back."

"Hai." 

"All things considered, this was actually a pretty good day," he admitted, scratching the side of his head. "Two mobile suits destroyed, not to mention aircraft and several vehicles. It was a lot harder back when we started doing this."

Kanna smiled. "You're not mistaken, Boss." _Of course_, she thought, _back then, we were using 7.92mm _Patrone _rounds from small-arms rifles to try to destroy the Zekes_. "Looks like the Spacemen are getting sloppier."

"Spacenoids, Kanna."

"Huh?"

"They prefer to be called 'Spacenoids'. Either way, Spacemen is kind of a misnomer, since they're lots of women serving Zeon."

"And do you think I give a fuck?"

"…no, actually, I don't," he admitted, holding back a laugh. 

**IV**

Cohen and Kirishima, both dressed in their gray Federation trousers and the former wearing a blue Fed Officer's jacket, strolled triumphantly through the Istanbul Federal Installation, outside the Capital City. The other soldiers, most of them either Turks or Eastern Europeans, saluted and offer congratulations as they passed. 

"Way to go out there, Keitaro!" yelled one of them, as he waved. "That's what, eleven now?"

"That many, huh?" grinned Cohen. "I never though I'd live to see two digits."

Kanna shook her head. "Boss, you are so full of shit..."

Keitaro looked at her and smirked briefly. At 186 cm, Lt. Commander Keitaro Cohen had a thin frame, but was not short. On the other hand, there was W/O Kirishima Kanna, probably the tallest Japanese soldier in the Federal Forces. Ever since they had met two years ago, in Brandenburg, she was the tallest person he had ever met, at 202 cm. She didn't look Japanese either, one of the first things he had noticed about her, besides her ridiculous height. She had light-ebony colored skin, and short cut, spiky red hair, and alert, violet pages. Her body shape also left a lot to worry about: she was not only tall, she was very athletic-looking, like a swimmer, and markedly well endowed. Had she been one half of her size, she would have looked like a more or less normal, albeit very attractive woman. She wore a bright scarlet tank top that matched the color of her hair, with her uniform pants. 

That was no the case. Kirishima, while with excellent proportions, stood abnormally tall and large, towering over all others, like a massive statue fashioned from bronze. He struck a fist against her bare shoulder, which was slightly above his eye level. 

"Come on now, Kanna," he laughed. "You know this is your victory just as much as mine."

"I really doubt that," she said indignantly, her eyes closed as she walked. "After all, only one of us can go stamping too more Zeke crests on the side of _his _cockpit module." She crossed her arms across her chest. 

Keitaro craned his head forward to get a better look at her. As friendly as Kanna typically was, and she was very friendly, this was not that unusual. The former Sharpshooter Trainee and Combat Engineer Commander had a feminine side to her, something she tried very hard to express properly, sometimes in the form of jealousy. Cohen mentally frowned, and the gears in his head turned. 

"You've got a few of those stamps on your suit too you know?" he added eventually, as the two climbed over a Type 61 Battle-tank in their path. 

Kanna cocked her head and slid over one of the 150mm cannons. "Hai, I know that."

"And you didn't just aim a gun and press a button. Those were either beam saber or up-close Hundred-Millimeter kills. That's something to be proud of."

"Oh please," she retorted, looking down at him. "For once, _I _would like the be the one who had led the Sharpshooters! _I _want to be the one with eleven kills stamped on my suit in red! _I _want to get commendations from Jaburo Headquarters! _I _want to make something _other _than a Warrant Officer!"

She paused and looked at him, and she suddenly grabbed his jacket, nearly lifting him off the ground like a puppet. "Come to think of it, I also want one of those cool jackets…"

Cohen snapped out. "Damn it, Kanna, let go of me! Fine, you can have the jacket, _just don't molest me_, all right?"

Kanna released him, and he stumbled to the ground, quickly rose to his feet, dusting himself off. Cohen sighed and rubbed his forehead. The two continued to a Supply Tent, and Kirishima opened a large Refrigeration Unit and knelt inwards, searching through the contents. Keitaro walked over to the large Air-Conditioner and switched it on, the noise waking up a uniformed-Lieutenant with his cap pulled over his head. He blinked his eyes and saluted the Lieutenant Commander with the brown beer bottle in his hand. "_Dobry wieczor, Comrade Lieutenant! _And congratulations for a good day's sniping," he said in a rustic, Polish voice. 

"_Dziekuje_," Keitaro said, carefully pronouncing it _dzhehnkooyeh_. He glanced wistfully at Kanna and nodded, as the Lieutenant went back to sleep next to the rumbling A/C. She withdrew from the open refrigerator, a glass bottle identical to the one the Lieutenant was holding. She tossed one to Cohen, he caught it gingerly and removed the cap against A/C grate. Kanna bit down on the metal bottle cap and gave it a good twist, popping it off, and spat the cap away. Cohen just stood there, quietly thinking, as Kanna rapidly consumed the contents of the bottle, her back towards him. 

The gears in his head came to a stop. "All right then. Next time, you carry the beam rifle, and _I'll _cover you," he said, giving one of the long strips of white cloth that Kanna kept tied around her head like a bandanna. 

She turned around quickly, looking at him, caught off guard. Cohen rewarded himself with the funny sight. "Whaddya mean?"

"Next time we go out, I'll order the technicians to equip your GM with the beam cannon and mine with the one-hundred millimeter. And I'll have Operations send you the next Ops Plan."****

She blinked. "You mean that? Or are you really full of crap?"

"I'll have them send it to you, sealed envelope with your name and everything," he answered, grinning.

"You can do that?"

"Of course I can. I'm practically a Commander. Everyone takes orders from me anyway."

Kanna paused, and for a moment, she took on a very majestic aura, the beer bottle still in her hand. "All right then."

He nodded, smiling gently. "It's settled. You see, that wasn't so hard, now was it?"

Before she could respond, one of the flaps of the tent's entrance lifted up, and a uniformed Officer with a cap emerged, bending over. "Lieutenant Commander," he announced quickly. "Communiqué for you, in the Comm. Center." 

Cohen frowned, and turned to Kirishima, who shrugged. He turned to the officer. "Communiqué? From where?"

The Officer smiled. "Jaburo, sir." 

The beer bottle slid from his hand, and he found himself swallowing nervously. However, he could not understand why he was panicking.

**V**

Keitaro swallowed nervously and leaned over the console, pressing the receiver switch. A human face, one of a gray-clad Federation Army Officer, a Major, replaced the Federation Insignia rotating on the screen.

"Keitaro Cohen," the voice of Juan Brendan said courteously. "Long time no see."

"Johnny-boy," he acknowledged, than scowled. "What do you want?"

"Why is it that people keep calling me 'John', anyway?" the other asked. "My name _Juan Brendan_. Nowhere in my name is there a 'John', or a 'Johnny', or a 'Jon'…"

Keitaro rolled his eyes and began to reach over for the disconnection switch. As soon as this became evident, Major Brendan quickly spoke out. "Wait, Cohen! This is important! I need a favor from you."

"I don't have to do you any more favors, Brendan," Keitaro replied indignantly. "I'm a _Lieutenant Commander_ now. A god damn _Lieutenant Commander._ I don't have to take orders from an Army_ Major_ anymore, either." He turned to Kirishima. "Right Kanna?"

The taller woman shrugged, as if to imply indifference.

"And you must be the infamous Kirishima Kanna," Brendan said. "My, you're really as big as your dossier says."

Keitaro rubbed his face. "All right, Brendan, what's the favor?"

Brendan raised both hands up, feigning innocence. "Nothing! A small endeavor that will contribute to the Federation War Effort, that's all!" His voice became hushed and whispered, as though afraid someone might hear him. "Look outside," he asked.

Keitaro frowned. "Excuse me?"

"There's a window behind you, right? Look outside."

He looked blankly at Kanna, who just shrugged. _This is stupid. _He turned around and walked to the window.

"Now," Brendan continued quietly. "Do you see two Jet Core Boosters?"

"He's says to look for two Jet Core Boosters," Kanna yelled out to Cohen. 

He looked around the base from the armored communications bunker, until he spotted two gray aircraft, resting next to two Type 61s. "I see them."

"He sees them."

"I need you and Kirishima to bring them to Jaburo. We're short on aircraft, and two Jet Core Boosters are actually pretty rare at the moment."

"He says he wants us to…." She began and paused. "You want us to do _what_?"

"Not so loud!" Brendan whispered angrily. "I need you and Cohen to bring those things to Jaburo."

"Why us?" Cohen asked. "I realize you may not know this, but we're kind of busy _being mobile suit pilots_, not air-jocks."

"Oh, come on, Keitaro," Brendan whined. "I need this from you, all right? I can't trust anyone else to do it right now. The Zekes are just too damn close."

"And I suppose you can just request two Core Boosters from anywhere else. You need _these _two specific ones, in Instanbul. Out of all the hundreds of Core Boosters on the Planet."

"….yes…"

"And how would we get back, in the event we actually did this?"

"…I could send you back on two of our new FF-7 TIN Fulcrums. Sort of like a trade."

Something clearly did not sound right. "Do the higher-ups know about this?" he asked.

"Of course they do!" Brendan replied indignantly, pulling at his collar. It wasn't hard to tell he was progressively getting more and more nervous. "Do you think I'm asking you two move two Core Boosters for no reason? They _asked _me to do this."

Cohen looked at Kirishima, then back at the monitor. "Fine. I'll _think _about it."

Brendan's tone suddenly became rushed. "That's great, Cohen, _gracias_. I owe you. Also, you both might want bring some of your personal effects, you know, in case you both…uh…"

"In case we _what_?" asked Kanna suspiciously. 

"…well, there's a lot of Zeon activity around here, you never really know what's going on. Something could happen. I'll see you in Jaburo on Monday!" 

The image disappeared, replaced by a rotating Federal Insignia. Kirishima hung her head down and sighed, disappointedly. "I'm guessing that I can forgot about earning some sniper kills, huh?"

Keitaro thought about it for a moment. "When we come back, I'll make sure you get some. Trust me on that."

"_If _we come back."

"I wouldn't worry about that," he said, almost grimly. "I don't think we're going to die at Jaburo."

**VI**

Brendan sat down at the communications console, his body relaxing. He popped his neck loudly, and looked around to check that he was alone. He took off his uniform cap and sighed. 

"Well, the Sharpshooters are coming," he mumbled to himself. 

Technically, what Brendan had done was not prohibited. With what he assumed to be Commander Kojima's approval, he had used a loophole, the Federal _Greater Authority _Article. Hidden in paragraph ninety-four, line seven of the charter of the EFAF, it allowed Federation Commanders acting in the 'name of Jaburo', to exercise near-unrestricted authority in the transfer of subordinate officers. 

Still, it was risky. The last officer to use the Article had been forced out of the Federation in shame.  

_Well, I suppose the ends justifies the means. _

He sat up and began to think of a scenario that would delay the Sharpshooters' return to Turkey.

**VII**

Kirishima stood, as she was apt to do, atop one of the MS maintenance gantries, to watch the sun set over the Black Sea. Beneath her, Keitaro Cohen's GM was undergoing regular maintenance and cleaning, as was hers in another gantry. The wind blew lightly, and she faced the sun, a sort of grim pride and majesty on her face and the white strip of cloth tied around her forehead flowing behind her. 

Beneath her, two technicians yelled instructions to each other, not really ruining the moment, but coming close. She watched as a third set a thin rubber pattern on green chassis next to the cockpit hatch, spray red paint over it, and peeled the pattern away to reveal a red Zeonic Crest. He then repeated the same process again, shaking the spray-can and then spraying. She ground her teeth together as she counted now eleven red crests along the cockpit hatch. 

_Don't be stupid_, she scolded herself. The past week had been an annoyance. She took a deep breath. It wasn't easy being friendly and good-natured all the time, and ever since that shipment of coolant had burst on her a week ago, freezing most of her upper body through her tank top, the usual Kanna Kirishima personality had evaporated and been replaced with general unconcern, conceit, and irritability. 

_Maybe the trip to Jaburo will do me some good, in that case. _Either way, she'd have to return to her normal personality for the next several weeks. 

She slid down the gantry and patted one of the technicians on the back, who acknowledged her with a nod. She headed over to the quarters she and Cohen shared, a fairly large and, by field standards, luxurious concrete bunker, complete with electricity and running water. She punched in the combination to the lock and ducked her head as she stepped through, to see him at his mattress, packing items into a suitcase. Her eyes wandered to the two large emblem sewn onto the shoulders of his blue jacket, two rifles crossed over an ornate red shield: the Federal Infantry Sharpshooter Corps. She had the same markings as well, on her own jacket. 

Keitaro looked up at her. "Oh, Kanna. Sorry about all of this," he said sheepishly. 

She crossed her arms and leaned against a wall, closing her eyes. "Don't worry about it."

"You mean you don't mind the reassignment?" he asked.

"Iyey, I've already forgotten." She smiled, and flicked her nose with her thumb. "Besides, Jaburo could be fun. Change is always nice." She opened her eyes and turned to her own matters, on the wall opposite to Keitaro's. "Either way, better pack."

Keitaro nodded somberly and reached underneath his mattress, and began to pull on something. He managed to pull free a large, black golf-club bag, and shook it.

"Golfing in Jaburo?" Kirishima asked jokingly. 

Out of the bag a long, antique-looking rifle came out. It was almost entirely metal, except for a wooden frame in the middle, and it had a scope on top and a large protruding magazine jutting out from the side, as well as seemingly two barrels, one smaller one beneath the other. Cohen lifted it up carefully, folded out the trigger, and sighted it. He removed the large magazine, and began looking around his mattress again. "Where are those _Patrone_ boxes?" he asked. 

"You know," she said, scratching her cheek with a finger. "I don't know why you keep using that antique. You're not even an infantry sniper, anymore."

"What, this thing?" Cohen asked, as he held up the rifle. A Fallschirmjägewehir Year-42 'Paratrooper Rifle', probably one of a few dozen or so left in existence by UC 0079. Cohen, while having only a modest salary and pension, had the distinction of possessing _two_ of them, smuggled with him from Brandenburg. The relics were a combination of a light-machine gun and a mediocre sniper rifle with a small extendable bipod under the barrel. Unmodified, it was worth as much as a GM probably, though Cohen, favoring practicality, had taken one of the rifles and refitted the scope, barrel, and firing assembly with more modern counterparts. Kirishima didn't know where the second FG42 was, or if Cohen still had it. "Because it works well."

"It belongs in a museum," she smiled.  

"What good is a gun if you're not going to use it?"

"It's a historical…thing…"

"An artifact?"

"Hai, that." She looked around her bunk, picked up a small box marked **60 X 7.92mm **and tossed it to him. "You should sell it to a museum, take the payment, and retire." 

Keitaro grinned, emptying a pile of the cartridges on the bunker floor. "And then what? What do I do with the rest of the money? Whores?"

"Your call, boss. I'm just showing you the way."

He nodded, as he pulled the magazine from the FG42. "A way that you could get promoted, yeah." He scratched his head. "Actually, that's not that bad of an idea. Problem is, there's a war going on, and I'm enjoying it way to much." He took a handful of the cartridges, carefully placed exactly twenty into the magazine, and reloaded it, leaving the rest of the shells on the floor. 

"Don't forget, this War isn't going to last forever. Hell, the new race for the Zeon is to see whose divisions can get off this miserable little ball of dirt first." 

Cohen snorted, carefully placing the FG42 in a long duffle bag with the Federal Insignia on it. "Idiots didn't know what they were getting themselves into." He sighed. "You know, I never thought I'd live to see the end of the War, but now it looks like I just might." He zipped the bag up. "And if we both do, do you know what that makes us?"

"What?"

He smiled and crawled onto his bunk, staring at the ceiling. "_Profession Soldiers_. For the rest of our lives most likely, people will see us with a sense of awe, and you know what they'll say?" He sat himself up, leaning on his arm, on his mattress. "You see that short Slavic man and the giant Japanese redhead? They were veterans of the War against Zeon." 

She smiled. "We'll be the official ass-kicker generation. Heroes."

"Plus, we'll be able to live off a Federal Pension for the rest of our lives, as glorified officers." He turned to her. "Nothing can stop us now, you know?"

"Damn straight. No Zekes, no Spacenoids, nothing. The War might as well be over."

There was a pause, as Keitaro reached to his uniform and pulled off the small brass tags that signified he was a mobile suit pilot. He tossed them up and caught them in his palm as they came down. _Amazing_, he told himself. _A relatively short war could decide the fate for all of humanity. _

_This is one hell of a One Year War._

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**Author's Notes: **Mark here, as the younger author. Sorry if this seems a bit rushed…it was an experiment fic. We still intend to continue with _Soldier of OZ_, but this will help get our hands wet in the_ UC _universe. Unfortunately, our plan to post this coincided with a severe computer virus attack that forced me to reformat, and I was delayed. All circumstances withstanding, this is a bit of a testing project. 


End file.
